


Everybody Has a Name

by iswyn



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Lost Bucky Barnes, POV Bucky Barnes, Past Brainwashing, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Steve, could be stucky if you squint hard enough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-17 11:21:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2307776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iswyn/pseuds/iswyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a drabble about Bucky's post Winter Soldier state of mind. </p><p>Who is he, really? </p><p>He knows that his fate is attached to Steve's somehow, but the Winter Soldier wasn't trained to make decisions. Only Bucky Barnes did that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everybody Has a Name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oldworldgods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldworldgods/gifts).



> This is a one-time thing, written for howlingcutemando on Tumblr. Amazing as I think some of the writing opportunities and feelings are, I already have a ship, and I will be going down with it. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!

He’d had the nightmare a hundred times since the fight over Washington D.C. a few months earlier. The fight. The blond man, Steve. The fall into the Potomac. The oddly desperate search for the blon… Steve, under the murky water. Only most nights, he didn’t find him at all. He found the lifeless body washed ashore when he arrived there.

Sometimes it was even worse. He throttled the man with his own hands, and watched the life go out of his eyes. His last words were always the same.

 _Then finish it… because I’m with you till the end of the line_.

He knew those words, just as he knew that voice, and those eyes, and _that man_.

The museum had been a revelation, of course. He had forgotten that everyone had a name.

Bucky. His name was Bucky. It had been so many years since he had had a name. He was ‘the soldier’ or ‘you’, not a person. James “Bucky” Buchannan Barnes. He had four names.

He liked Bucky best.

He liked the way that the… Steve had said it. He dreamed of that, once. The one time he didn’t have a nightmare. The night after he went to the museum. He had dreamed of _Steve_ , in a military uniform, smiling at him. He called him ‘Buck’, and they drank, and laughed, and… they were friends.

The soldier didn’t have friends. He didn’t have friends; he didn’t have a name; he didn’t have anything but a mission. Technically, Steve was still his mission. He had failed to kill him, and since he hadn’t been in contact with a handler since the fight, his last standing orders were still to kill Steve.

He didn’t plan to kill Steve anymore, but he kept close to him anyway. It made him feel better, more secure, being near his mission. His friend. His Steve. Everything in his head was so jumbled, sometimes he forgot the difference. He forgot whether he was the soldier or Bucky. The only constant was that no matter what part of his brain was talking, Steve was the most important thing in his life.

Steve was looking for him, too. Sometimes that made him nervous. Sometimes he liked it. The soldier wasn’t important to people, other than what he could do for them. He couldn’t do anything for Steve; hadn’t given him anything but pain, but Steve kept looking for him.

Meanwhile, his surveillance became less and less _surveillance_ , and more and more _stalking_.

Finally, almost inevitably, he found himself picking the lock on the man’s door and sneaking into his room. Steve was sprawled across the whole bed on his back. It was warm out, and he didn’t seem to use air conditioning, so he had kicked the sheets down into a twisted mess at his feet. He wore only dark blue boxer briefs that were sticking to his skin in the humid East Coast summer heat. His body belonged in a painting in an art gallery somewhere, not on a cheap motel bed in northern Virginia.

The soldier had an image of the same face on a much smaller body, stretched out the same way on a much smaller bed and wearing only white briefs. Somehow, that scrawny kid had belonged in an art museum just as much as this Adonis.

“Stevie” He started at the sound of his own voice, not realizing that he was speaking aloud until it was already out. He turned to make a hasty exit, since apparently he couldn’t even do the simplest of covert ops with the distraction of Bucky. It seemed that Bucky was incompetent at being sneaky.

“Don’t go, Buck.”

He spun back around to find the — Steve — sitting up, his hair sticking every which way. He was completely awake, though. He obviously had been for some time, unless he always came completely awake instantly.

“I don’t know who Bucky is,” he found himself explaining. Was he apologizing for not remembering? Explaining why he was leaving? This was not the soldier’s way. What was he doing?

The man nodded. “I know, but I can remember enough for both of us.”

“Why?” He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Why would anyone care so much about someone who was obviously not the friend he’d known? “I won’t ever be him.”

“It doesn’t matter if that’s true,” the man explained in a soft voice. “Even if you never remember me, it doesn’t change the fact that I know you. You may have changed, but you haven’t changed that much, Bucky. You’re a good person. You saved my life without remembering me.”

“I don’t know why I did that.” The soldier was sure that meant something. How could he be the good person, how could he be Bucky, if he didn’t even know why he saved someone’s life? James Buchannan Barnes was a hero. Heroes knew why they saved people’s lives. They wanted to. It meant something important to them when they saved people’s lives.

“But you did it.” The man was inching toward him, but stopped cold when he took a deliberate step away. “You saved my life, and that means something.”

“You don’t know that. I don’t know what it means. How can you know that it wasn’t an accident?” He knew there was a rational argument against his actions, but he couldn’t seem to put it into words.

Steve smiled, and it felt like he’d turned the lights on in the room. “You don’t save someone’s life like that accidentally, Bucky.”

There was a protracted silence. The soldier… Bucky? He didn’t just not know who he was, he didn’t seem to know anything anymore. He didn’t know what to say to the man who was his best friend in another lifetime. He quashed the urge to throw himself against the other man and bury his head against that unreasonably large chest. The soldier was discomfited by that idea, and Bucky seemed to find it amusing.

 _Do it_ , the little Bucky voice in his head urged. _How long has it been since someone touched you, other than to hook you into that torture device? How many times have you been through that?_

“Buck?” Steve was looking worried. Did he think that the soldier was going to kill him? Strangely, he patted the bed next to himself. “At least come sit down. Or better yet, get some rest. You couldn’t be sleeping well.”

“How would you kno—” Bucky broke off, frowning. “I never sleep well in the summer.”

Steve grinned. “Never did. You always complained that only a little punk like me could sleep through heat like this.”

He looked at the bed for a long minute before his eyes strayed across the room and settled on a couch. He walked slowly over to sit on it. Testing his resolve, even as Bucky grinned like an idiot in his head somewhere, he leaned down against the soft cushion. Every fiber of his being seemed to scream ‘trust Steve’ and ‘danger’ at the same time. He kept his eyes on the man as he lay all the way down on the couch.

Steve lay down facing him on the bed. “I’ve missed you. Or it’s nice to meet you. Whichever you prefer.”

“You’re nuts…” he yawned as the words came out, obscuring them a bit.

Instead of being offended, Steve laughed. An honest, pleased laugh. It was the last thing Bucky heard as sleep claimed his consciousness.

That night, he didn’t dream of death.


End file.
